If you’re serious about staying relevant and building future-ready skills, start sharing what you learn. You don’t need to become a professional podcaster or YouTube influencer, but having a platform – even a simple one – gives you the discipline to take in information, make sense of it, and communicate it clearly. That habit (which is the skill of sense-making) sharpens your thinking beyond just passive learning.

https://swiy.co/go-learning-out-loud

What does your learning plan for the future look like?

I was speaking recently at the Financial Advisers Association of Australia National Congress, helping advisers remain relevant and fit for the future.

In the Q&A segment, somebody asked me a question about podcasting:

“I want to start a podcast, but I’m really new to it. How can I get over that fear of thinking that other people will dismiss it, and how can I build confidence – and then go on to build an audience?”

In the moment, I gave a response along the lines of:

“Just get started! Everybody starts off from that place, and with practice, you’ll gain confidence and build that audience.”

I still stand by that, but let’s take that a bit further.

If you plan to turn your podcast into an income stream, then, yes, focus on building your audience. But if you’re not, use your podcast as part of your professional learning network.

In other words, whether you’re podcasting, blogging, publishing a YouTube channel, or regularly posting valuable content on LinkedIn, these are valuable activities in their own right. Not just to share learning and ideas with others, but for your own learning as well.

When you start to invest in these activities, you’re making a commitment – even if just to yourself – to learn.

You have to:

absorb information

ask questions

filter what’s relevant

package it for others

make it relevant and engaging

and share it with others.

All of that makes you a better learner, not just a better content creator.

This is part of the future-ready skill of sense-making.

Sense-making is about examining our complex world, choosing what’s important, absorbing it, and sharing it. It’s once of the most valuable future-ready skills you can have – at work, at home, and in your community.

So what are YOU going to do?

To be a sense-maker, you don’t need a podcast, blog, YouTube channel, or other outlet. It might just be sharing regularly on a Slack channel at work or presenting regularly at staff meetings. Whatever you choose, commit to doing it now

And to REALLY get value from it, commit to doing it regularly. That’s because you’re investing not only in the content, but the platform. And that makes it easier to do it next time. And the next time. And the next time.

It’s like building a railway. You make a big commitment to get the first train on the track (because you first have to build the track!), but then every other train takes less effort.

If you don’t have a platform like this already, set that as a goal for 2026.

And if you’d like to know more about sense-making and other future-ready skills, join my free online presentation TOMORROW.

Register for the virtual masterclass:

https://swiy.co/go-learning-out-loud

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